I was just thinking about how I haven't been real sick for some time. So that's probably why Mountain Guy came down with something this week. Not that I believe it works like that.
"I feel like shit," he said on Monday morning, and then proceeded to run full throttle through the day. "I'm not sick; I can't be sick," he said.
So I wasn't really surprised when, come Tuesday afternoon, he ended up stranded at my apartment, burning like a furnace in my bed.
"It's just that I feel so weak all over and my joints hurt when I move," he said, like the victim of some nuclear accident. "Maybe it's from this spider bite that I got," he said pointing to his forearm.
It was pitiful.
I looked at him with as much sympathy as I could muster [let's just assume because he was sick] and said: "Baby, I think you have the flu."
"But I can't have the flu," he persisted, "I have to go to work."
So I tucked him in and made him drink a cocktail of lemon salt water. There's only so much headway you can make with the ravings of a lunatic.
But I am genuinely empathetic. It feels odd not to be the one who is bedridden. Even Mountain Guy knows better than to call me in the middle of the afternoon for fear of interrupting my nap.
I almost felt guilty being awake and productive while he sweated it out in the next room with only a fan and the afternoon sun for company.
I'm not surprised, though. Mountain Guy has been running around like a crazy person, working on multiple landscaping jobs, readying what will be his family's new home in July, and generally trying to be an attentive father to three girls on summer break.
As a side note, he finds it difficult to identify with the term 'father.' "OK, Daddy-O," I say.
"But I can't be sick," he whines on the phone this morning, "I swore that off long ago."
"What!" I exclaim, "You're just human after all?" And I thought I had delusions of grandeur. "Well, I won't tell if you just stay in bed for a while."
Meanwhile, I relish the chance to nurse instead of being nursed. "You have to take care of yourself if you want to take care of everybody else," I point out.
He's coming around. He met a 90-year-old man at a gas station the other day who said, "Every day above ground is a good day." So a day in bed, watching the pilot episode of Breaking Bad with your girlfriend can't be too terrible.
"Falling is helpful for seeing the world," I read this morning in a poem by Robert Fagan. Not everyone can contract super powers from a spider bite, but even we mortals are sometimes gifted with superhuman gratitude.
OneArmGirl
"I feel like shit," he said on Monday morning, and then proceeded to run full throttle through the day. "I'm not sick; I can't be sick," he said.
So I wasn't really surprised when, come Tuesday afternoon, he ended up stranded at my apartment, burning like a furnace in my bed.
It was pitiful.
I looked at him with as much sympathy as I could muster [let's just assume because he was sick] and said: "Baby, I think you have the flu."
"But I can't have the flu," he persisted, "I have to go to work."
So I tucked him in and made him drink a cocktail of lemon salt water. There's only so much headway you can make with the ravings of a lunatic.
But I am genuinely empathetic. It feels odd not to be the one who is bedridden. Even Mountain Guy knows better than to call me in the middle of the afternoon for fear of interrupting my nap.
I almost felt guilty being awake and productive while he sweated it out in the next room with only a fan and the afternoon sun for company.
I'm not surprised, though. Mountain Guy has been running around like a crazy person, working on multiple landscaping jobs, readying what will be his family's new home in July, and generally trying to be an attentive father to three girls on summer break.
As a side note, he finds it difficult to identify with the term 'father.' "OK, Daddy-O," I say.
"But I can't be sick," he whines on the phone this morning, "I swore that off long ago."
"What!" I exclaim, "You're just human after all?" And I thought I had delusions of grandeur. "Well, I won't tell if you just stay in bed for a while."
Meanwhile, I relish the chance to nurse instead of being nursed. "You have to take care of yourself if you want to take care of everybody else," I point out.
He's coming around. He met a 90-year-old man at a gas station the other day who said, "Every day above ground is a good day." So a day in bed, watching the pilot episode of Breaking Bad with your girlfriend can't be too terrible.
"Falling is helpful for seeing the world," I read this morning in a poem by Robert Fagan. Not everyone can contract super powers from a spider bite, but even we mortals are sometimes gifted with superhuman gratitude.
OneArmGirl
Exquisite!
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